


of loss, of grief, of hope

by rarmaster



Series: (who's gonna) Save the World [9]
Category: Tales of Symphonia, 悪魔城ドラキュラ 暁月の円舞曲 と 蒼月の十字架 | Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow & Dawn of Sorrow
Genre: (discussion of) canon character death, Gen, PTSD flashbacks, alternate title: Dead Wives Club, kratos has a bad time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-03 01:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: Kratos has a bad night. Soma does what he can to help.





	of loss, of grief, of hope

**Author's Note:**

> **content warning** for a recounting of Anna's death, which I don't think is any more graphic than what Kratos will tell you about it in-game if you let him, but like, fair warning that it's here I guess???

The very first thing he registers is the pain.

Sharp, like a sword in his own gut instead of hers, white-hot and agonizing. It eats at him, consumes him; the pain of sorrow and loss and _guilt,_ the three of them forged into a dagger that stabs him in the heart and remains there, a constant ache, a constant reminder.

 _“Kratos… please…”_ Anna’s voice echoes on every side of him, trembling and feeble. “ _Please, while I’m still me!”_

He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, knowing what he will see if he opens them and not wanting to see it. The sensation of his sword gripped tightly—too tightly—in his grasp filters in, followed by an ache in his arms. _No, no, go back,_ he thinks desperately. _Differently, do it differently,_ he pleads, while somewhere in the distance Lloyd’s voice calls out for a third path, another option, an option where no one has to die, even though Lloyd should not be here except as a crying, trembling child clinging to Noishe’s back.

 _“Please, Kratos!”_ Anna begs one more time, and his arms move against his volition.

He feels the warm splatter of blood against his face, his skin. Hears a startled half-cry of pain. Lloyd wails in the distance. Kratos keeps his eyes shut and does not open them because he does not need to see it again, not again.

 _“Thank you…”_ Anna whispers.

Grief and anguish wash over him, and Kratos opens his eyes—

—and immediately shoves himself upright, gasping for air as if breaking the surface of water after spending much too long submerged. It’s a relief to see an open field around him and a starry sky above him, but the realization he’d only been dreaming is more bitter than that.

( _The kids had refused to let him stay up and keep watch for the fifth night in a row—even though he did not_ need _to sleep—and so he’d acquiesced and attempted to rest as they requested._

 _Of course, with his rotten luck, it only resulted in a nightmare_.)

Despair roils up in Kratos’ stomach, escapes as a low moan in his throat before he catches himself and stifles it, not wanting to wake his sleeping companions. And yet he cannot keep the quiet whispers of “Anna, Anna, I’m so sorry, Anna _,”_ from escaping his lips, murmured over and over again like a prayer. He didn’t open his eyes in the dream, but the images still dance in his mind’s eye, burned there years ago. His sword embedded in Anna’s flesh. The smile on her face, as in death she transformed back to how she was supposed to look. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do you better,” he mumbles like a promise. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Anna—”

“Kratos?”

Kratos’ head snaps up, eyes settling on Soma’s face for a moment before immediately sliding off of it, unable to fully settle back into the present. Perhaps it says many things, about his state of mind, that he had neither heard nor seen Soma approach despite the fact Soma is crouched now in front of him. Distantly he remembers that Soma had offered to take first watch, which is a relief. At least he did not disturb anyone not already awake.

Kratos ducks his head down, shame filling up the wound that the knife of pain and guilt had left in his heart. “…sorry,” he says.

In the corners of his vision, Kratos can see Soma shake his head. “No, no, it’s alright,” Soma assures him quickly, a little laugh in his throat. “I get it, nightmares are a bitch sometimes.”

“Not nightmares,” Kratos mumbles, in correction. “Memories.”

“Ah. Well, those are a bitch, too,” Soma says, unfazed.

Kratos isn’t awake enough to have the peace nor presence of mind to watch what he’s saying, so “I wish I could stop dreaming about that night,” slips from his lips before he realizes it. Once he does, shame boils up in that wound again, but it’s already been said, hasn’t it?

“Hm,” Soma says and nothing more, his eyes distant. He looks like he’s actually _considering_ the question, which makes Kratos rethink opening his mouth to tell him to forget about it. Absently, Soma reaches up and waves his hand in front of his face, as if attempting to shoo away something that was floating there. Strange.

When Soma’s still silent moments later, Kratos begins to wonder if he’s deliberating with Dracula, and if so, about what. The expression on the boy’s face is unreadable, though not because Soma is at all good at keeping his face still. It is unreadable because flickers of emotion are passed back and forth and suppressed too quickly for Kratos to pinpoint any of them. Soma eventually closes his eyes. Sighs.

“Unfortunately, you won’t,” he says.

But there’s a shift in the mana about him, a darkness rising up under his skin, and Kratos is pretty sure it isn’t Soma speaking.

“Hm?” Kratos says, not following.

When Soma’s eyes open, they’re red, confirming Kratos’ suspicions.

“You won’t stop dreaming about her death,” Dracula clarifies, managing to sound somehow clinical and nothing more about it, though if Kratos was really listening, he’d easily be able to hear the discomfort hedging into Dracula’s tone. “At least, I know Lisa’s still haunts me, sometimes, even waking. And it has been… six hundred years, since Lisa was killed.”

Kratos laughs, brokenly, though he is not surprised by the answer. It had been four thousand years, since Martel had died, and though he does not often dream of her, that grief still clings to him like a shroud. He knows that Anna’s death hurts more because it is fresh—and because he had not cut Martel open with his own sword—but the thought of four thousand more years of pain like this throbbing sharply and persistently in his chest is more than Kratos knows how to handle.

The knife of sorrow and guilt twists a little in Kratos’ heart, making him shudder and gasp, furiously pushing away the memory of Anna’s death played again on loop. He hangs his head, staring at his hands.

“How… do you deal with the guilt?” Kratos asks with a quiet mumble. He feels small. He is older than Dracula, but Dracula has coped with the loss of his wife for longer than Kratos has, which makes Kratos—foolishly, selfishly—hope that he has answers that Kratos has not yet found.

( _Because, Kratos knew well enough by now how to numb the pain of grief. It’s the guilt that he cannot seem to be rid of, the gnawing reality that Anna is only dead because of_ him.)

“Guilt?” Dracula parrots, in surprise. “There was no guilt. Only rage. Lisa was murdered for the crime of consorting with me, but that was neither my fault nor hers! It was the _ignorance_ , the _cowardice_ of humanity that killed her.” Dracula has the presence to not raise his voice, but it definitely begins to tremble with his anger, and Kratos can feel something like fire boil up in Soma’s veins. “ _Humans_ are not _worth_ the air they—”

He cuts off, abruptly, takes a deep breath. Soma’s doing? Perhaps.

Kratos shifts, not uncomfortable per se, but something about Dracula’s words striking an unfortunate chord within him. He can recall with perfect clarity the way Mithos’ voice would shape around similar words, and it evokes the sense of being out of place, though the reminder that _he_ is human does not hit quite as strongly as it would had he been in Derris-Kharlan, because here at least he is not surrounded by half-elves.

He understands Dracula’s anger, though, as well as he understands the follies of humanity.

“Is that why you hate the world?” Kratos whispers. He thinks of Mithos

“Yes,” Dracula answers without hesitation.

Kratos nods, unsurprised.

“Is that why you do?” Dracula asks.

“I do not,” Kratos insists, and it is the truth. He continues to hang his head, eyes fixed on his open, trembling hands, unable to find it in him to look up at the man he is conversing with. “I do not hate the world,” he repeats, for good measure. “…Apathetic, might be the better way to describe my feelings,” he says, his tiredness and sudden sense of connection to the spirit in Soma’s veins startling him into honesty. “It is just difficult, with Anna gone. To find much point in anything, anymore.”

Dracula hums in sympathy. He does not need to say it for Kratos to know he understands, perhaps a little too well.

Silence hangs between them for a moment, more like a blanket than a shroud, in that its weight provides some comfort. Kratos opens and closes his hands absently, searching for words but not finding them, trying not to think about Anna’s final words to him, the fact he remembers the way her voice shaped around them better than he remembers most of the other things she’d ever said. He shivers. Closes his hands and clenches them together tight enough that if he had not been wearing gloves he would have drawn blood with his nails.

“Are those responsible dead?” Dracula asks. “Did they at least pay, for their crime of her murder?”

The knife of guilt twists and digs deeper into Kratos’ chest, making it hard to breathe. He laughs, emptily, unable to do anything else. Dracula means well, but he doesn’t know.

“I’m the only one responsible,” Kratos whispers, staring at his hands. “It was my sword that cut her open. I was the one who killed her.”

“Holy fuck,” Soma breathes, and Kratos is pretty sure it is in fact Soma who says it. “Holy fucking shit I—” Kratos looks up just enough to see Soma’s hand cover his mouth, tears welling up in silver eyes. He stares at Kratos for a second, then lowers his hand just enough to ask: “There wasn’t another way, right?”

Kratos hesitates. Shakes his head.

“They removed her exsphere,” he whispers, in explanation. “They turned her into- into a—” But he cannot call Anna a monster, he could never call her a monster. “It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her fault,” he insists instead, closing his eyes against the tears that burn in them but will not fall. Angels do not—cannot—cry.

“Kratos, I get it,” Soma tries to interrupt, but Kratos barely registers the attempt. Words continue to spill from his mouth.

“There was nothing else I could do. She wasn’t herself, she- she attacked Lloyd—” His voice catches on the thought, the memory of his son’s scream and his wife’s roar of horror. “And she _begged,_ she begged, and I- How could I… How could I refuse her?”

Soma takes a shaky, shuddering breath, his hands over his face. “What the _fuck,_ Kratos,” he exhales, and Kratos wonders if he said too much.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“No, I,” Soma says. “Fuck, I’m. _Fuck_.” His hands fall from his face and into his lap. Kratos turns his head away, even as the boy’s words fall against his ears. “God, Kratos, I’m- I’m so sorry.” Soma’s hand brushes against Kratos’ shoulder. Kratos barely feels it, as disconnected as he is right now, but he’s comforted by the notion. “No wonder your dreams are so shitty.”

Kratos chuckles, the sound reverberating in a ribcage that is as empty as his heart is full of grief.

“And…” Soma begins, then his voice shifts. “I’m sorry,” Dracula says, through him. There is a certain distance in Dracula’s voice that there was not in Soma’s. “I did not realize the depth of your pain.”

Kratos shakes his head. “I do not blame you for not understanding that pain,” he says. “I would never wish it on anyone. And we are still alike, you and I. We both know the pain of losing someone we loved, and—”

“And the despair of losing all your hope,” Dracula finishes, nodding. “Of losing the one thing in the world you thought was worth living for.”

Kratos nods once in affirmation. It was different kinds of despair they both turned to, in the absence of their hope—his a path of apathy, and Dracula’s a path of destruction—but it was despair nonetheless.

“You didn’t lose your hope, though,” Soma interrupts, suddenly. The passion in his voice makes Kratos look up to a pair of burning silver eyes. “Or- if you lost it, you got it back. Both your hope, and your reason to live. Kratos, you have Lloyd.”

“Hm,” Kratos says, thoughtfully.

“And, Drac, you have… No, not Adrian. I mean, probably Adrian, if you— _Listen._ You have me.”

Kratos does not hear the other half of the conversation, because Dracula doesn’t see the need to say it out loud for his benefit, but he can see the way Soma’s face darkens with determination.

“Hope to end the cycle of suffering is no less important than hope to keep on living,” Soma insists, to a man Kratos cannot hear right now. “Hope is hope.”

Hope is hope.

He still has Lloyd.

Kratos breathes carefully, taking the inhale and exhale of air into his lungs to expel some of his anxieties as well as he can, or at least push them to the side to deal with later. He sets his shoulders, sits up straight again.

As he lets the two sort themselves out, Kratos turns his attention upward to a familiar comfort on nights when sleeping is too difficult. The stars burn brightly in the sky, each pulsing like a heartbeat that Kratos can feel in his bones even if he cannot hear. He finds himself scanning the skies for familiar constellations, and then he remembers. He laughs, lightly and exasperated, wondering how exactly he’d managed to forget.

“What is it?” Soma asks. He thinks it’s Soma.

“I forgot that being in a different world means the stars aren’t the same,” Kratos answers, his gaze still fixed on them.

“How’d you manage to forget?” Soma laughs, and yes, it’s definitely Soma. Kratos smiles a little wider, grateful for the teasing front Soma is putting on, though the tilt of the words makes Kratos ache a little for his son.

“I am not sure,” Kratos admits, trying to fight down the pain but not the smile.

Soma shifts so he’s sitting more comfortably next to Kratos. “You miss your stars?” It’s conversational, Kratos assumes.

“Yes,” he says, because that is the truth. “But…” Something burns in Kratos’ chest. Something silly, something foolishly sentimental, but it’s hard not to lean into it, with the stars swimming in his vision. “I suppose we have the freedom to name the stars whatever we want, if they do not already have names.”

Soma sends a look at him, raised eyebrows and skepticism in his tone that could belong to either himself or Dracula. “Where… are you going with this?”

Kratos swallows, hesitates. It is foolish. But he cannot stop the burning in his chest.

He reaches upwards and points towards a pair of stars, one reddish, one gold—though perhaps he can only see their colors due to his enhanced vision. “One for Anna,” he whispers, thinking of the red. “And one for Lisa,” he whispers, thinking of the gold.

“Oh,” Soma says, or perhaps Dracula says. It’s a quiet release of air more than it is a word, which makes it difficult to tell who it belongs to.

Kratos cannot find in himself the courage to smile, but warmth blossoms in his heart strong enough that the knife of guilt buried in it starts to dissolve. He might call it healing, if he wasn’t certain the knife would likely return, another night. But for now, at least, he lets the warmth fill up the wound in his heart, eyes still fixed on the stars, though he wonders what his companions think about his decision.

“Which one’s… Lisa’s…?” the man next to Kratos whispers, and Kratos points it out again rather than looking at him.

“Do you see it? The pair is right next to each other, red and gold—Lisa’s is gold.”

Soma’s body shifts, leans a little closer to better align his line of sight with where Kratos is pointing. “Yes,” he says, after a moment.

Kratos lowers his arm and hazards a glance at his companion, and is greeted by features that look a little winded. Logically Kratos knows this is a good thing, but his embarrassment catches up with him. Perhaps it is too sentimental. Too earnest. Too forward, even.

He turns his head away and reaches up his right hand in a familiar motion that is both pushing his hair out of his face and rubbing at his temple. “Perhaps… it is a foolish gesture…” he whispers, heat on his cheeks.

“I think it’s great,” Soma says. Definitely Soma.

Kratos wants to look at him, but looks upwards again instead, determination burning in his soul. He is already here, so why stop at Anna? He searches the sky for the right star, one bright, one that— _there_ , the one that burns somehow with a greenish light. It’s perfect.

He points it out, for his own sake more than his companions, whispering her name to cement the promise in the sky.

“Martel,” he names it.

There’s a soft chuckle from Soma’s lips. It’s fond, more than it is anything else.

“I suppose, then,” Soma’s mouth says, but Kratos can feel Dracula’s darkness shaping around the actions this time. Dracula lifts Soma’s hand to the sky, hesitates a moment, then points. “The blue one, not far from Lisa. Elisabetha.” His hand lingers there, and once Kratos spots the star in question, he nods to confirm he knows which one it is. He does his best to commit them to memory, even if they will likely not see this same sky of stars after tonight.

He does not ask who Elisabetha was. It does not matter. The only thing that does is that Dracula does not want her to be forgotten.

Kratos wonders if that is enough, but the burning in him is persistent, and the perfect star catches his eye immediately. It is perhaps the brightest in the sky, and it is right next to Martel.

“Mithos,” he names it. Mithos is not dead, but the idealist boy—the bright and brilliant boy who ended a war because he had the courage to stand up and say _no more_ , the boy whose brilliance and hope was twisted into something terrible in the hands of grief—he deserved place in the stars, too. And it would be wrong, to separate him from his sister, in life, in death, in memoriam.

There’s a catch in Dracula’s lungs. Kratos pulls his eyes away from Mithos’ star as he sees Dracula raise his arm again, though it trembles, this time, and the darkness in Soma’s veins does not pull it quite as confidently. There is a hesitation, for a long moment, finger not quite pointing. Kratos waits.

And then, Dracula singles out a star.

“Leon,” Soma’s voice says in a whisper.

Kratos makes note of which star it is, committing it to memory. Soma’s hand falls.

Anna… Lisa… Martel… Elisabetha… Mithos… Leon…

People they have loved. People they have lost. People they will never forget.

Soma’s shoulders begin to tremble, and there’s a wheeze that builds up in his lungs. Kratos turns to him, and is surprised to see tears pouring down the boy’s cheeks, tears he scrubs fruitlessly at.

“Are you alright?” Kratos asks.

“Yeah, I- I’m not really fine.” Soma laughs as he answers, gives up at wiping away the tears. “I mean I am, it’s just—it’s a lot, I guess? A year ago I didn’t even- I didn’t even know this was my life, and now…” He breaks off, like he’s not sure how to explain the rest.

“I… understand,” Kratos says, though he’s not totally sure he does.

“Sorry, sorry,” Soma says, and he sniffles, tries again to wipe away the tears. “I think I’ll be okay, though. Really.”

“If you insist,” Kratos begins to say, but then Soma smacks a hand against the ground.

“Aw shit, besides, it’s _me_ that should be asking _you_ if you’re okay,” Soma says, turning to look at Kratos, concern pinching his brow. He does not specify why, but Kratos does not need him to.

The nightmare comes easily again to Kratos’ mind, but he has little difficulty banishing it just as soon as it arrives.

“I am fine,” he assures Soma. Certainly, he is no worse than he usually is.

Soma studies him a moment, like he suspects a lie, but finally he nods, satisfied. “Good,” Soma says, wiping his eyes one last time. “Good.”


End file.
